As I write this, insipid pop music is being blared out from speakers about 100 metres from my flat. There’s a big stage being constructed there, with expensive lights and monitors, and a giant pile of white balloons.
This is democracy, Russian-style.
Up the road, a slightly less-well-funded protest by the ‘Other Russia’ movement, which is what passes for an opposition movement in Putin’s Russia, is underway. About 4,000 protestors, led by the unlikely figure of chess champion Garry Kasparov, are marching for the right to hold free elections, while around 9,000 cops, riot cops and soldiers circle them and go in to drag out the ring-leaders.
Actually, looks like Kasparov just got arrested. Best thing that ever happened to his campaign.
Whenever the opposition holds a rally, the Kremlin always tries to trump it, to show how happy the people are and how little they give a crap about the opposition (which is basically true). Last December, the Other Russia held a rally attended by about 3000 people. The next day, the Kremlin-funded youth group Nashi held a rally attended by about 150,000 students, all of them dressed as Santa Claus, clutching sacks of goodies to give out to WWII veterans. You can read an account of that surreal weekend here.
This time, the Kremlin seems content to put on a rock show on Tverskaya, right outside my flat, the swines.
If ever the Situationist theory that democratic capitalism was an illusory Spectacle was true, it’s in Putin’s Russia.
It’s all pretty pointless. A waste of Kremlin money. Very few Russians really care about the opposition because they’re all doing so much better than they used to, thanks to high oil prices. If oil prices fall and people started feeling worse off, no amount of white balloons is going to stop them demanding a better government.
Putin has helped the rise of a new caste – the Siloviki – ex-KGB guys who have been given the most senior and most lucrative jobs both in the government and in the state-owned economy. The idea is that this caste (all of them mates of Putin’s) are somehow really the elite, the people best suited to run the government and the economy. So Russians should leave the business of government to them, and watch the pretty white balloons.
This is rubbish, of course. Eventually, private business will be strong enough in Russia to demand better governance than a bunch of ex-spies with no business experience trying to impose their ideas of national security onto the economy.
They will be superseded, historically. In the meantime, I have to put up with their annoying pop concerts.
PS Did anyone see the Guardian article two days ago where Boris Berezovsky called for revolution in Russia? The timing of the piece – just before the Other Russia’s rally – is deeply suspicious. As Garry Kasparov said, it looks designed to discredit the opposition movement and make them look like the cronies of an exiled thief.
If the British government were slightly less naive, they’d kick Berezovsky out, let him cause trouble in Haiti or some other country.
